Africa’s young people need to acquire skills and expertise to meet a future job market whose needs are not yet known. It’s a dilemma – and one that needs solving urgently. Two thirds of the continent’s population are under the age of 30 and at least one-third of these young people are unemployed and feeling discouraged about their uncertain futures.

Implemented in Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, the Youth and Social Justice Futures project enabled young researchers to experiment with a range of strategic foresight tools to re-imagine the future and the skills they would need to work and thrive within it. Most importantly, it recognised young people as the sophisticated changemakers themselves, as well as essential co-creators of a more equitable and sustainable future.

While ‘strategic foresight’ and ‘futures thinking’ sounds more like science fiction than international development, these approaches are grounded in realities that we would all recognise. To name a few: traditional approaches to governance and policymaking are not working for the majority world; an overreliance on prediction and certainty in planning are inadequate for our current pace of change and scale of complexity; and excluding young people from policy processes leaves decision-makers disconnected from youth perspectives. Given these problem statements, new thinking is required – and long overdue.

The project developed and used tools such as Futures Literacy Labs (FLLs), ‘Reframe’ and the ‘Three Horizons Framework’. These tools offer a structured approach to tackling complex and uncertain issues by connecting the present with envisioned futures.

Highlights of the research:

• The use of different foresight tools to identify anticipatory assumptions and plausible futures from youth participants helped gain more nuanced insights into diverse youth experiences, challenges, and transformative potential around education, economy, health, climate, and social justice.
• Through online workshops, youth learned how to use foresight tools, conduct research and engage with policymakers on their preferred futures, preparing them to be changemakers.
• Youth visions emphasized sustainability, humanism and innovation.

Above all, the project highlighted the importance of continuously consulting the youth to ensure that policymaking includes youth perspectives and insights. In this way, systemic and transformative innovations in African policy and governance can truly make sail.